New E fan assembly FINALLY finished

[RLDSL]

.. now to get the blamed thing installed. But it's been a long time in the designing and making considering 30 holes to cut with the plasma cutter, 96 holes to drill, bends to have done, edged to finish trim with a plasma cutter, figureing out how to pad teh edges to not harm the rad against vibration, etc, etc. I designed it like a factory tipe shroud so the flaps would pull closed when teh fans are drawing so they would pull full through the fans, but at road speed, when it gets to a point where the ram air overcomes the fans, it will blow past. The fan choice was figured out by Jerry ar Rodney Red Radiators, and actually he wanted to go with one milder and I opted for these bad boys. These things are the stoutest electric fans you can get short of ones that are for competition only and require a set of cool down fans of their own between heats or their motors will burn up If these suckers won't keep this thing cool , nothing will. Amperage draw is around 30 ea, I already have the 3g ( stock for my 92) and I'm getting it custom rebuilt to output 200amps
and the whole shooting match is being controlled by a Spal electronic fan controller, that set me back a couple of hundred bucks.
Just waiting for a cool enough day now to put it on, Everyone pray for decent weather ( not like this week where I've had mounted tires exploding out in the yard from the heat so I can finish this project up.

 

[Silver Burner]

Wow that's an awesome setup!

 

[FORDF250HDXLT]

nice!
whats the details on the fans?
what are the openings for? are they screened in? your must be trying out pushers?
if your setting this up for pushing,im a little skeptical here.i don't think she'll cool once your up to 40 mph.that thing wont allow enough air to pass through,and they'll be working even once up to speed i think,and working hard at that.
if this isn't a pusher setup,than im confused,or im seeing holes that are not really there.

ahh,ok i had to read what your typed again.very interesting.
so what controls the flaps to open/close? what made you think she needed so much air to cool? do you have a hard time staying under 240 degrees now?

 

[RLDSL]

nice!
whats the details on the fans?
what are the openings for? are they screened in? your must be trying out pushers?
if your setting this up for pushing,im a little skeptical here.i don't think she'll cool once your up to 40 mph.that thing wont allow enough air to pass through,and they'll be working even once up to speed i think,and working hard at that.
if this isn't a pusher setup,than im confused,or im seeing holes that are not really there.

Those are pullers. It's set up like a lot of European factory shrouds that use flaps to control air flow . At low speed the flaps draw shut when the fans are pulling more than the ram air effect and it allows the fans to maximize overall draw across the entire surface area of the radiator instead of only drawing just in front of the fans , which actually loweres teh resistance and increases flow, but when the ram air effect from road speed gets to the point to where it overcomes what the fans are drawing, then the flaps open and let the air flow past freely so as to not restrict cooling air flow and maximum cooling is achieved at all times. Spal makes a smaller shroud that comes with a pair of their lighter fans that comes with 12 flaps in it for the same purpose. They make OEM fan setups in Europe, so I opted for their componants. THe quality difference between them and the other lines available are night and day.

 

[reklund]

60A worth of badass Electric Fans! Nice! Can't wait to see the finished project, and to see you put a load on the truck and bury the pedal without any overheating issues!

 

[biggin92]

Nice work! As usual

 

[flareside_thun]

Any chance you could get a video of these bad boys sitting on the ground and then have power applied to them? I bet they'd hover! You're gonna have NO cooling problems with this setup. Well done!

 

[franklin2]

That is a small problem with electric fans. If they are not being used, and you are running down the highway, the "windmill" affect actually restricts air flow compared to no fan at all. Looks like the little air doors are a way to try and avoid this, which would prolong the time before the fans would actually have to be turned on.

 

[RLDSL]

That is a small problem with electric fans. If they are not being used, and you are running down the highway, the "windmill" affect actually restricts air flow compared to no fan at all. Looks like the little air doors are a way to try and avoid this, which would prolong the time before the fans would actually have to be turned on.

Exactly, in that way they have a two fold effect. They keep the thing open when the fans are not engaged so that the ram air can flow freely at all points of the radiator. The shroud is only roughly 3/4" thick so there isn't a lot of room for air to have to worry about figuring where to go. It will push straight through if the fans are off at all points as if there were no restriction behind it, but if the fans kick on at low road speed, the flaps will draw shut and all air will be pulled through the fans, as road speed increasesthat will gradually change over from that arrangement to the fans pulling hard directly in front of themselves and the ram air pushing through the openings around them
There is also a 16' and 10" pusher mounted on teh front of teh condenser for an extra boost, but they are an indirect boost as there is a roughly 3-4" gap between the rad and the condenser and at low speed the efans will be drawing the lions share of their air from around the condenser via the path of least resistance.

The fan controller is a computerized controller that will kick teh fans on in two stages so as not to fry everything at once with a high current draw. It kicks them on at a low speed setting at a pre set temp, then at high speed when max temp is reached. I'm going to set the low speed at 220 and high at 230 and that should have them kicking off around 210 ( Evans coolant recomends 230 for turning fans on if you can set the things for max fuel effeciency, I don't have to worry about boiling over until 375 so those temps are plenty cool) and I'm going to have a manual switch to kick them on at the bottom of long grades so I can start long pulls off cool

I managed to get this truck back home from the west coast on just the two pusher fans with a busted fan clutch grossing over 18k and that includes going over the Rockies teh hard way, without overheating it, so you can only imagine how it's going to run with this setup

 

[RLDSL]

Any chance you could get a video of these bad boys sitting on the ground and then have power applied to them? I bet they'd hover! You're gonna have NO cooling problems with this setup. Well done!

THey might just hover. When they first came in, I went to test them and hooked the first one up to a batt with some jump wires and the thing jumped out of my hands Torquey little ******

 

[icanfixall]

We have a grade here out of So Ca called cahon pass.... As I climb it mt my fan kicks in and the temps actually go down as I'm climbing. As I reach the top the fan is locked up solid and making plenty of noise but its keeping things cool. I'm thinking on trying some electric fans simlar to what Robert has done. Maybe install a couple of small electrics instead of the vents... Still thinking...

 

[RLDSL]

We have a grade here out of So Ca called cahon pass.... As I climb it mt my fan kicks in and the temps actually go down as I'm climbing. As I reach the top the fan is locked up solid and making plenty of noise but its keeping things cool. I'm thinking on trying some electric fans simlar to what Robert has done. Maybe install a couple of small electrics instead of the vents... Still thinking...

There would be an ever so slight possibility that you mught be able to gain a very small handful of CFM by swapping around to a different combination of fans I think it worked out to 12s and 10s, but the huge problem with that wound up being that fan motors wound up sticking out too far with those type fans and in teh wrong places no matter how you sliced it and they'd be banging off of ac compressors and all kinds of other fun stuff. The drawbacks against the gains made it a complete no brainer to steer clear of. ( in actuality when calculating the flow when figuring in the restriction of the radiator etc, the other fans really flow slightly less, so there really would be no actual gains now that I think about it)

 

[f-two-fiddy]

So when are they going into production?

Price???

 

[RLDSL]

So when are they going into production?

Price???

The chances of me making these things is pretty darn slim. Too labour intensive. It would require a CNC cutting table to punch them out if wanting to make more than 2 of the things ( trying to get the accuracy on all those holes freehand was simply maddening , My poor old 60 year old drill press got a work out). Thankfully, I've been working very closely with Jerry at Rodney Red Radiators and basically we put a system together, but there was no shroud design in existance for these trucks, so I took on the task of hammering out a prototype and taking on the testing. If all goes well, it will lead to a production model. I've been forwarned it isn't going to be cheap, probably in the $500 range and after all the work I put into this thing, I can certainly understand why

I wish I didn't have a friggen doctors appointment today, nice and cloudy and mild for once. Perfect day to work on the truck.. naturally, it'll be 101 again tomorrow

 

[Black dawg]

very nice